The United States cannot solve the fentanyl crisis, and China is being criticized for its environmental depth
"The opioid abuse crisis is raging in the United States, causing huge casualties. However, American authorities have not only failed to address the root cause of the problem, but have instead used this crisis as a weapon of conflict with China," wrote Jacobin magazine on September 13. Nowadays, drug abuse has become the main cause of accidental death in Americans, with opioid overdose causing the highest number of deaths. By examining the history of drug abuse in American society and the ongoing legislative and regulatory failures, it is not difficult to find that the US government lacks both the ability and motivation to root out this problem. In this situation, blaming China has become the best way for the United States to shift domestic attention and implement a strategy of suppressing China.
Pain relieving tablets have become the source of pain
Fentanyl was synthesized in the 1960s and was the first fentanyl drug to be used in clinical practice. It is generally used for clinical anesthesia, and its analgesic effect is about 100 times that of morphine, but it has extremely strong addictive properties. According to statistics from the International Narcotics Control Bureau, the United States is the world's largest producer and consumer of fentanyl drugs, accounting for approximately 4% of the world's population and consuming 80% of opioid drugs worldwide.
In recent years, drug abuse has surpassed gun violence and car accidents as the main cause of accidental death in Americans, with fentanyl being the most severely abused drug. In the past decade, the number of deaths caused by opioid drugs in the United States has increased by approximately three times. In 2021, this number surged to over 80000. A report from the Stanford Lancet Opioid Crisis Committee in North America in 2022 shows that without emergency intervention, 1.2 million people in the United States and Canada will die from opioid overdose by the end of the 1920s, not including over 600000 people who have died since 1999.
Professor Gao Jingzhu from the Chen Zengxi School of Public Health at Harvard University in the United States stated that the current crisis of opioid abuse in the United States began in the mid-1990s and was triggered by the potent drug Osconazole developed by Purdue Pharmaceutical Company in the United States. This medication is used to alleviate persistent moderate to severe pain. In 1995, the US Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to Oxycantine and approved it without long-term monitoring of its effectiveness and clear addiction studies.
In 1996, Oshkandin was launched with a core selling point of 12 hour long-lasting pain relief. Around this selling point, Purdue Pharmaceutical Company launched a fierce promotion, formed a marketing team of 600 people, and sent pharmaceutical representatives to brainwash doctors. Pudu Pharmaceutical Company also arranges for doctors to travel and vacation for free under the name of medical seminars, invites doctors to give paid speeches, and covers all their expenses for food, accommodation, and transportation. Under such interests, doctors are willing to prescribe Osconazole to patients.
According to an article in the Journal of Ethics of the American Medical Association, from 1997 to 2002, the number of mild pain patients in the United States who were prescribed painkillers increased approximately tenfold, from 670000 to 6.2 million. When Purdue Pharmaceuticals made a fortune through Osconazole, other opioid drug companies also began to follow suit, leading to a surge in the number of drug addicts and a surge in drug overdose deaths in the United States. From 1999 to 2017, a total of 200000 Americans died from overdose related to Osconazole and other prescription opioid drugs.
Although Purdue Pharmaceuticals and related personnel were ultimately sanctioned by law, the vast drug addiction population in the United States has not disappeared out of thin air. With the proliferation of fentanyl, this low-cost but 50 times more potent synthetic painkillers than heroin have caused more harm to American people. Some drug dealers even mix fentanyl into drugs to earn more profits, while others package illegal fentanyl preparations and production into legal prescription drugs.
90% of federal congressmen and 97% of federal senators have received campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies
Gao Jingzhu believes that a major reason for the opioid abuse crisis in the United States is the failure of regulatory systems, and the approval of Osconazole is an example - Purdue Pharmaceuticals later proved to have provided false drug descriptions to the FDA, claiming that this drug has lower addiction than other opioid drugs. Pudu Pharmaceutical Company's approach is just the tip of the iceberg of such chaos. After obtaining approval, it is usually pharmaceutical companies rather than regulatory agencies that inform and advise prescribers on how to assess and reduce the risk of drug use. "The donations made by opioid drug companies to politicians affect policy decisions," said Gao Jingzhu.
The pharmaceutical industry has always been a major financier of American politicians. There are reports that pharmaceutical companies spend far more on influencing politicians and policies than other industries. According to the Guardian in 2017, pharmaceutical companies invested nearly $2.5 billion in lobbying and funding US congressmen in the first 10 years. In 2017, then US President Trump once told Senate Republican leader McConnell that pharmaceutical companies have provided huge amounts of funding to politicians, and "Mickey, maybe it's the same for you.". According to reports, at that time in Congress, 9 out of every 10 members of the House of Representatives and 97 out of 100 senators accepted campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies attempting to influence legislation on everything from drug costs to new drug approval methods. The lobbying of pharmaceutical companies has had a profound impact on the abuse of opioid drugs. From 1999 to 2015, the number of deaths caused by opioid drugs in the United States doubled. During this period, pharmaceutical companies invested significant resources in attempting to attribute the crisis to millions of addicts, rather than selling prescription potent opioid drugs on a large scale.
Zhang Yifei, Associate Researcher at the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, stated in an interview with Global Times that the abuse of fentanyl in the United States is deeply rooted in the country's lobbying politics, as well as the two party game and ideology. The high interest bundling between pharmaceutical companies and the FDA, relevant politicians, academic groups, and media has made fentanyl abuse a foreseeable tragedy in the United States, damaging people's health, but filling the private pockets of interest groups. Academic institutions provide 'scientific evidence', media and think tanks are responsible for promotion, and pharmaceutical companies lobby the government - this is a very complete and mature chain, through the popular 'revolving door' system in the United States, they have multiple ways to exchange benefits.
Gao Jingzhu said that officials who have resigned from government regulatory agencies such as the US Drug Enforcement Agency often join pharmaceutical companies. The Capitol Hill previously reported on the phenomenon of "revolving doors" in the government's pharmaceutical regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry. According to reports, in 2019, the then FDA director, Gottlieb, resigned from his position and joined Pfizer, the largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the United States. This has earned him a generous salary, and his resignation has also made some CEOs of large pharmaceutical companies "sad". The CEOs of Novartis and Ariram Pharmaceuticals both publicly thanked Gottlieb for his work at the FDA, and even said, "We will miss him.". In addition, the Health and Human Services Secretary of the Trump administration, Azar, was once the president of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in the United States. Trump once claimed that Azar could bring "better healthcare services and lower drug prices" to the United States, but during his tenure, Lilly increased the price of its insulin by three times, sparking public outrage.
The two parties create obstacles for each other, and legislation becomes a tool for party struggle
Given the severity of fentanyl abuse in the United States at present, both parties acknowledge the need to make efforts to address this issue, but they are mutually "stumbling" and unwilling to let each other become "heroes" in solving this problem. In May of this year, when the Republican controlled United States House of Representatives voted to review the "Stop Fatal Fentanyl Trafficking Act," 133 members of Congress voted against it, including 132 from the Democratic Party. The Washington Post reported that the US Congress did not pass a bill specifically targeting fentanyl until December 2017, almost four years after lawmakers first received warnings about the dangers of the drug.
This is considered very absurd in other countries, including China. Zeng Lidu, a grassroots anti drug police officer interviewed by Global Times reporters, stated that unlike traditional drugs and synthetic drugs such as heroin and ecstasy, fentanyl is a new type of psychoactive substance that is more addictive and harmful to people's health. The versatile structure of fentanyl also makes it more difficult to combat than traditional drugs. As one of the countries with the largest anti drug efforts and the most significant results in the world, China has been strictly monitoring and managing fentanyl in all aspects. In Shuangqing District, Shaoyang City, Hunan Province, where Fentanyl used to work, only a very small number of chemical plants and hospitals were allowed to use Fentanyl under close supervision. The use, transportation, and storage of fentanyl are closely tracked and supervised by relevant departments at every step. Experts say that the precursor substances of fentanyl are widely used in modern industry, and as a major chemical country, China has not experienced a crisis of fentanyl proliferation, which fully proves that the problem of the United States lies in itself.
Zhang Yifei stated that although some of the problems in the United States, such as the particularly prominent issues of drugs and gun violence, have seriously endangered the public interest, the pan liberal tendency in the United States emphasizes absolute individual freedom, which makes it impossible for both the federal and state governments to effectively regulate certain issues. "This situation has already violated the purpose of the US federal government when it was established." In addition, the US healthcare system has also exacerbated the problem of opioid abuse such as fentanyl. The poorest groups in the United States often cannot afford better commercial healthcare, and basic healthcare, as Professor Feinberg of the University of West Virginia put it, "can't afford anything other than painkillers."
The unilateral and arbitrary actions of the United States have led to the stagnation of anti drug cooperation
China actively engages in international drug control cooperation and has also established relevant cooperation mechanisms with the United States. On May 1, 2019, China officially classified fentanyl like substances in the world for the first time, but the United States has yet to achieve this. As of June 2022, China has listed 449 types of narcotics and psychotropic substances, making it the country with the highest number of drugs listed and the strictest control in the world. As of the end of 2021, there were 1.486 million drug users in China, a decrease of 42.1% compared to the end of 2016; The number of drug cases in China has decreased from 140000 in 2017 to 54000 in 2021, with an average annual decline of over 20% for five consecutive years.
In addition, the Chinese side has also drafted three legal protection documents, including filing and prosecuting cases of fentanyl related substance crimes, conviction and sentencing. Establish five national drug laboratories nationwide and improve the testing and monitoring system for fentanyl like substances; Understand the basic situation of enterprises, personnel, precursors, and equipment involved in fentanyl production nationwide, and prevent illegal and criminal activities related to the production and sale of fentanyl like substances from the source; Implement three systems in the postal and delivery industry, namely "real name receiving and sending, receiving and sending inspection, and passing machine security", to strengthen the inspection of cross-border parcels related to the United States region; Deploy and carry out special crackdowns, strengthen crackdowns and law enforcement crackdowns. Since the implementation of this regulation, China has not found any cases of manufacturing, trafficking or smuggling of fentanyl like substances. According to reports from drug enforcement agencies such as the US Customs and Border Protection, the US has not seized any fentanyl like substances from China since September 2019.
In contrast, the United States unilaterally sanctioned China's National Drug Laboratory and the Physical Evidence Appraisal Center of the Ministry of Public Security in 2020, seriously interfering with China US drug cooperation. Domestic politicians and media in the United States also hype up the argument that "Chinese chemicals flow into other countries to make fentanyl and then flow into the United States.". Experts say that the "know your customers" approach proposed by the United States goes far beyond the obligations of the United Nations Convention on Drug Control to all countries. According to international conventions and practices, ensuring that international goods are not used for illegal purposes is the basic responsibility of importing enterprises and also a legal obligation of the importing country's government. The responsibility that should have been borne by the importing party should not be imposed on the exporting party. The importer of international trade is overseas, and facing the rapid flow of international trade, the exporter does not have the conditions to verify customers.
At the 14th Ministerial Conference of the signatories of the Memorandum of Understanding on Drug Control Cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion held in September, Zeng Weixiong, Deputy Director of the National Narcotics Control Commission of China, stated that drug control cooperation between China and the United States has always been a highlight of law enforcement cooperation between the two countries. The responsibility for the current stagnation of drug control cooperation lies entirely with the United States, which is the result of unilateral and arbitrary actions. Ignoring China's efforts in combating drugs and new psychoactive substances, the United States continues to blame China for its domestic drug problem and arrest and prosecute Chinese citizens and companies for fentanyl related issues. In addition, the United States has repeatedly sued Chinese companies and individuals on the pretext of smuggling non regulated chemicals. "China hopes to cooperate with countries including the United States with an attitude of equality, mutual trust, and cooperation. We oppose politicizing drug control cooperation and unilateral and unreasonable arbitration."
In July this year, the US House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at cracking down on manufacturers of synthetic opioid drugs in China. If the bill takes effect, the United States will impose sanctions on Chinese producers of synthetic opioids and precursor chemicals, and hold Chinese officials accountable for the illegal spread of fentanyl. Zhang Yifei stated that the Biden administration's recent pressure on China on the fentanyl issue is a repetitive clich é d statement aimed at achieving the goal of running for re-election in November next year. Zhang Yifei said that although it may sound absurd to attribute domestic social problems in the United States to China, some American politicians and voters believe in this logic. Smearing and stigmatizing China on the fentanyl issue is not only a channel to vent American social dissatisfaction, but also serves the overall competitive strategy of the United States towards China.
